Each month, those subscribed to our Random Coffee group receive an email inviting them to meet with someone else in the group. The pairing is random, so it's an opportunity to meet someone else with a shared interest in big data and data science. The invitations go out on the first of the month, and you have one month to catch up for a coffee or beverage of your choice.
The scheme has been operating for a couple of months, and there has been … [Read more...]

We have an excellent line-up for the next Mega Data Cluster event, to be held on Friday 2nd June, hosted by Curtin University. Short presentations will be followed by networking and refreshments.
Our first speaker is Prof Simon Cook, the Western Australian Premier's Fellow in Digital Agriculture.
Simon’s career spans 25 years in research management to support precision agriculture, information-rich natural resource use and agricultural … [Read more...]

Many thanks to KPMG for hosting our May meeting, and to Ben Talbot from KPMG for organizing the event and being the MC for the night. 68 people attended and there were plenty of lively conversations during the drinks and nibbles afterward.
Dr Penny Stewart gave an excellent overview of the activity of her company Petra Data Science, which is focused on using trans-disciplinary data in the resources sector. She gave two very good examples: 1) … [Read more...]

The October 2016 Mega Data Cluster meeting was a great success, with around 130 people attending an excellent presentation on the Australian Synchrotron.
Australian Synchrotron Director Professor Andrew Peele showed dazzling rich-colour images that shed insight into the mind-bending computing behind the real-life benefits delivered through the Australian Synchrotron: from peeling back the surface of priceless artworks to de-clogging inkjet … [Read more...]

The session held at UWA as part of UWA's Research week was a great success, with around 200 people attending. Our panel had diverse backgrounds and interests and gave us several quite different perspectives around the common theme of data science.
This was a slightly different format for a Mega Data Cluster event, one in which we were seeking more audience participation than the usual speakers out front. There was, of course, a possibility … [Read more...]

The next Mega Data Cluster event is being held in conjunction with the Institute of Advanced Studies as part of UWA's Research Week. Data collection and computation are becoming cheap, plentiful and ubiquitous, and data science is emerging as a hot topic. A discussion panel of data scientists and the audience will explore its future. The session is 6pm Thursday 8th September, at the University Club, UWA.
The panel will bring together several … [Read more...]

STEM Infrastructure and Innovation
Dr Erica Smyth is our guest speaker for the next meeting, Tuesday 19 July at the State Library. Erica will be presenting about her recent journey as part of a delegation to investigate business and investment opportunities in Israel, and its entrepreneurial culture and innovation eco-system.
In her role as Deputy Chairman of Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), she visited three … [Read more...]

Once again Perth is holding a Big Data Week, and this year promises to be the biggest yet. Big Data Week 2016 is a showcase of what WA has to offer in terms of data analytics and other ‘Big Data’ projects. The objective is to highlight and promote the ever-growing range of big data projects and applications here in Perth, and which have the potential to make WA an even better place to live and work.
The Hon. Bill Marmion MLA, Minister for … [Read more...]

ECU: Using big data for cyber security
Edith Cowan University is our host for our first meeting of 2016, to be held on 21st March. Professor Craig Valli will talk about cyber security from the other side: using data analytics to look for patterns of illegal cyber activity. We will also have another speaker from ECU, to be confirmed shortly.
Professor Craig Valli, Director of the Security Research Institute at ECU, is an expert in cyber … [Read more...]

We had an excellent presentation from Arthur Berrill at CCIWA's "Getting Started in Big Data: think Small Data" breakfast on November 20th.
Arthur gave us much to think about: setting up Hadoop/SPARK on a few PCs is easier than you might think, and an simple way to get started. The new technologies are excellent at scaling, so you don't have to start big. The cost reductions in applying big data architectures can be dramatic.
Arthur also … [Read more...]